Hunting

steve23

okay, so ive been asked if i want to go hunting with some guys from work!!!

a bit out of the blue, but we somehow got on the conversation earlier today!!!

i dont know what to do!!! i used to love target shooting, i think its great fun, but ive never turned a gun on an animal!!! i dont think i could actually do it, and if i did it might haunt me forever!!!

anyone any experiences of hunting!!??

andyp

Do you eat meat?

steve23

yes i do!

but its the fact of killing an animal yourself!!!

andyp

But if you're happy to eat it then you should be okay with killing it in the first place.

It's an uneven contest after all, i.e. you have a gun whereas your prey just has it's wits!

nicklouse

go and see what you think. it will make you mind up for you.

schlepcycling

Could you not go and deliberately miss, so you can have fun with your mates from work but you haven't killed anything.

steve23

schlepcycling that sounds like a good idea!!! but knowing my aim, i'll aim to miss and bloody hit something!!!

nwallace

andyp wrote:

But if you're happy to eat it then you should be okay with killing it in the first place.
It's an uneven contest after all, i.e. you have a gun whereas your prey just has it's wits!

If you intend on eating what you shoot, it is a fairer contest than what the animals that have been produced/reared for food have when they get pushed into the Abattoir. (THats the stuff that you get in packaging on the shelf in tesco)

If you find a gun to be too technological for fair hunting consider making a few spears to take your food gathering method back to when Animal husbandry and crop farming were primitive and not capable of supporting a massive population as it does now.

If you want to go even more primitive try one one one wrestling with the creature, this probably had a very high death toll. Especially when it was no longer possible to feed the tribes with the smaller creatures around. Though attacks from the bigger creatures that humans were very unlikely to beat in a wrestling match probably also speed this up and thus up the food chain the human went.

In brief what I am saying is if humans hadn't developed hunting tools (which would double up as defensive tools) we probably wouldn't have been able to hold a decent position near the top of the food chain thus there could have been 6 billion Tigers instead of 6 billion humans living in houses.

I'm crap at clay pigeon only ever hit 3 out of around 60, assuming I am just as poor at spear throwing I would probably have found myself outcast from the tribe and left to starve assuming the sabre tooth hagglesnootches didn't get me first.

jsmithfym

what you supposed to be hunting?

fidbod

Steve,

i have been hunting a few times only rabbits or pigeons and it has always been a curiously dead experience. Absolutely no enjoyment from it but equally no emotional trauma.

When I used to shoot i got far more elation from shooting clays and competing with my mates for the best round. Thinking back to my CCF days shooting a good tight group was also a lot better.

Give it a try though, it a very different discipline to target shooting

graham56

It`s ok Steve they don`t shoot back

jsmithfym

I used to shoot as well but found i didn't enjoy it. Now hunting on horse back thats a different thing.

jibi

Ride a Mountain bike and use only bows and arrows

Or why not just take a camera and "shoot" away.

george

term1te

When we were introduced to the new lady in the office next to me we had to come up with something nobody knew about us, for a fun getting to know you game. I said that I used to be a lifeguard, new lady said "I kill animals". Turns out she shoots wild boar, which is quite an acceptable thing to do over here.

I used to shoot a lot of clay pigeon, but always baulked at shooting anything alive.

Random Vince

i'll be going rabbit hunting in a farmers barn (so they are classed as pests)

anything i shoot i'll be trying to cook.

Random Vince

jsmithfym wrote:

Now hunting on horse back thats a different thing.

if you're on a faster animal than yourself, shouldnt the fox (assumed prey) be allowed a faster animal than itself to ride on, such as a badger?

steve23

thanks for the replies!

some interesting reading! i wouldnt mind a go at clay pigeon shooting, maybe i will suggest that!!!

its just the thought of killing something for "fun" that seems a little wierd! having said that, if i kept it and ate it, its only natural..............